A Student's Journey Through Paris in Fall 2012

No More Sweet Classes (HUIT)

Note to self: Do not take Dayquil, non-drowsy allergy medication, and your normal dose of aspirin all at the same time to try to combat a cold. You will want to go curl up in a corner and die. After we left the house this morning and all of that medication started to take effect around… oh, Wagram on ligne 3 of the metro, I really wanted to turn around and go home. Sheila was walking her normal pace through Saint Lazare as we made our transfer, and I couldn’t keep up for the life of me. All I could think by the time I actually got to sit down on the ligne 12 train was “so this is what being roofied feels like… and I did this to myself?” When we got out of the metro, and I trudged behind Sheila to class, I told her I knew I’d have to make it through theatre, but I was half tempted to ask her for her notes for Atelier and go home right after since I felt so awful…

Theatre wasn’t too bad once I actually got to sit down. We did get a chance to talk about seeing Un chapeau de paille d’Italie last night, but Mme. Hersant let one of our classmates lead the discussion, and she tried (and failed) to not give too much of her own opinion of the piece. She let us watch some other clips of how it’d been done in other fashions, and told us how our test would be done. We’ll have to do some outside research (like reading some reviews of the piece, we’re even allowed to print out those reviews and bring them in if we’d like), then plan out our critical paper on the piece itself. I think I’m going to do mine on the organization of disorder in general, and how it worked for the piece (or how it works for Vaudeville in general, since I’ve studied French Vaudeville a little before). We’ll also have a basic multiple choice test on some of our French theatre vocabulary. I think I’ll do alright on that part, it’s getting my project done that I’m worried about…

During the break, I hung out with Rouge and Joan, and I managed to finish my overhead view of my set for my final project. I re-scaled my back wall (it’s technically an orthographic projection of the three walls I have for my set, if we’re going to be precise), and then I headed into my final lesson of Atelier for the semester. I’ll report to both sessions of Atelier next week, but I’ll be taking exams instead of learning anything new. I’ll have to write a composition in one session, then I’ll have a comprehension test in another.

There are a few more uses for ainsi, so we covered them today. How would you say “This author writes novels, short stories, as well as poems?” Cet auteur ecrit des romans, des nouvelles, ainsi que des poèmes. The formula you need to use here to say “as well as” is ainsi que + nom/pronom. We went off on a tangent for moment to cover why we were supposed to say des romans in that last sentence instead of lesromans. Some students will say “but he writes novels in general, that’s why it’s les romans, right?” Wrong. If you say les romans, you’re saying that author writes all of the novels in the world. He only writes SOME novels, that’s why you need to use des, which is a partitive article. Take this sentence for example: No, I’m not vegetarian, I eat meat. Would you say de la viande or la viande? You’re not eating all the meat in the world, and even though you probably eat all TYPES of meat in the world, you’re still only eating SOME of the meat in the world. Non, je ne suis pas végétarien(ne), je mange de la viande. One more: The Parisians always wear black. Do they wear all the black in the world? No, that’s not possible. They only wear SOME black. Les Parisiens portent toujours du noir. Back to our next lesson, how to deal with goals instead of consequences (which we dealt with in our last lesson). Translate this: “I’m going to stay here so that I can see her.” We know that ainsi would work if this were a consequence, but this isn’t the case. What can we use because this is a goal? Pour!Je vais rester ici pour pouvoir la voir. The structure here is pour + infinitif so long as you have the same subject (in this sentence, we did because it was “I’m” and “I”). To get a little more elegant (like if you’re writing something), you can use afin de + infinitif. Try this one: “I’m going to give you some money so that you can take a taxi.”Pour is still valid, but we’ve got to get a little more tricky. Because we have two different subjects here (“I’m” and “you”), we need to use the structure pour que + subjonctif. Our correct sentence is Je vais te donner de l’argent pour que tu puisses prendre un taxi. For a little more elegance, use afin que + subjonctif. Our last lesson had to do with tout/tous/toute/toutes. We already know that it means “all” in the sense of an adjective, like “he at all the cake” (il a mangé tout le gateau) and when you use it in that sense, it has to agree with your direct object. When you use it as a pronoun, it gets a little more tricky. When you’re going to use that word in a sense of “everything,” you’re always going to say tout. “I understood everything” is J’ai tout compris. Your tout is going to go in front of the participle. In this case, the tout is also neutral, it’s not masculine or feminine. What about “All of them are Americans?” There are technically two correct answers for this one, depending on either if you’re writing a paper, or if you want to sound snobby, or if you’re speaking normally. Your normal answer is Ils sont tous américans. The snobby/written answer is Tous sont américans, and you better pronounce that “s” on tous. Here, your tous has to agree. If the group you were talking about was a bunch of girls, you need to say toutes. Last one: “I know all of them.” Je les connais tous. Same thing, if they’re all girls, it’s toutes. I headed straight home and attempted to take a nap. I ended up lying in bed wondering why I wasn’t asleep for the better part of two hours. I did some homework and felt sorry for myself after that. I do not make a very good sick person, which is why I’m thankful it doesn’t happen often. We had steak, mashed potatoes, and salad for dinner. Madame let us know that she was going to leave us something for dinner tomorrow night since she was going to be leaving tomorrow and returning on Saturday since her daughter is getting married (just the civil marriage since there are two marriages that happen in France). Sheila left to meet up with Kyle to go check out Champs-Élysées at night, and I wanted to go, but there was no way I was going to get dressed (I was already in my pajamas) and go out into the cold feeling the way that I was.